Sure. What the hell. I'm feeling charitable. He seems like a nice kid."

Here is a more likely scenario.

Snowden never saw any of those thousands of documents on an NSA computer. Never happened.

Instead, he was either used or volunteered as a CIA operative to carry the endless turf war between CIA and NSA a new step forward. People at the CIA WERE able to access those NSA documents and they gave the documents to Snowden and he ran with them.

This was a covert op launched by the CIA against a chief rival, the NSA. NSA, the agency that's far bigger than the CIA. NSA, the agency that's been taking over intelligence gathering, that considers itself superior to everybody else in the intelligence field.

The CIA, of course, couldn't be seen as the NSA leaker. They needed a guy. They needed a guy who could appear to be FROM the NSA, to make things look worse for the NSA and shield the CIA.

They had Ed Snowden. He had worked for the CIA in Geneva, in a high-level position, overseeing computer-systems security. People would later assume he had the wherewithal to get into NSA files and steal documents all by himself.

Somewhere in his CIA past, Ed meets a fellow CIA guy who sits down with him and says, "You know, Ed, things have gone too damn far. The NSA is spying on everybody all the time. I can show you proof. They've gone beyond the point of trying to catch terrorists. They're doing something else. They're expanding a Surveillance State, which can only lead to one thing: the destruction of America, what America stands for, what you and I know America is supposed to be. The NSA isn't like us, Ed. We go after terrorists for real. That's it. Whereas NSA goes after everybody. We have to stop it. We need a guy... and there are those of us who think you might be that guy..."

During the course of this one disingenuous conversation, the CIA is killing 37 innocent civilians all over the world with drones, but that’s beside the point. Ahem.

Ed says, "Tell me more. I'm intrigued."

He buys in.

And what his CIA handler said, in his completely cynical self-serving way, is true. The Surveillance State isn't about catching terrorists.

At a quite insane level, it's about a partial science trying to become a complete science. It's about the vision of systems engineers:

To be able to predict and control the actions of any and every human.

Can enough useful information on Human Being X be compiled, collated, and analyzed, quickly, that would enable overseers to know what Human X is going to do—and to redirect his next action?

His next action and future actions?

To put it another way, minds who are enraptured by the Matrix want to make that Matrix even tighter and more nearly perfect.

They want to play 100-dimensional chess with most difficult piece on the board as the main target: the human. They want to see whether they can operate that piece and work it and predict it and control it and win the game.

Winning the game means reducing 100-dimensional chess to a closed system.

This is what the engineers of the Surveillance State are trying to do with the global population.

Why?

Because they think they can.

Because they work for men who want to own all life.

Because they view individual freedom as a highly convincing illusion they want to invalidate and smash.

I'm reminded of a 1982 story I did for LA Weekly. I interviewed Bill Perry, who had just quit his job as head of PR for Lawrence Livermore Labs, where they do research on building better nuclear weapons.

Bill cited, as one of his defining moments, a conversations he had with a physicist there who was complaining that the Lab needed more funding.

Bill said, "Look, we can already blow up the world a dozen times. What else do you need?"

The physicist looked up from his desk and said, "You don't understand. This is a math problem, a physics problem."

That's the mindset. It's all about making a better system. Who cares about collateral human damage?

When these scientists see freedom, they shrink away from it. It disturbs them. It reminds them they aren’t free. It reminds them they don’t know what freedom is.

You can even see this in some of more astounding press comments about Ed Snowden. Yes, it was all right that he exposed NSA but... he should have stayed in America and faced the music.

What?!?

A mind-boggling assessment to say the least.

However, it's really based on a perception, true or false, that Snowden is currently running around free, uncontrolled.

And that he has no right to be, because nobody does, outside the range and reach of government.

Freedom is the wild card. "Order must take its place." That's what the Surveillance State is all about.

"We've got these biological machines called humans running around out there and it's crazy. They’re possibly in possession of something called FREEDOM which is too horrible to contemplate, because I, an obsessive problem solver, long ago sacrificed MY OWN FREEDOM on the altar of... I've forgotten. Anyway, wait a minute, these biological machines don't really have freedom, they're running on faulty programs...YES, THAT'S IT, and the programs have to be changed, ONCE AND FOR ALL!! Yes, that feels better. There is no such thing as freedom.”

“Yes, that's it. No one is free, it's all a delusion. There are only good and bad programs, and these billions of human machines are running on bad programs... so we need one central program, one CENTRAL PROGRAM for everybody, and then order will prevail and coordination will prevail, and peace will prevail.”

“In order to develop such a program, we need Total Surveillance. We need to observe all these biological machines in their crazy lives, 24/7, wherever they go, whatever they do... and then we can collate that information and analyze it and come up with a solution. Algorithms. A better program. An all-encompassing program. Then we can insert it into the behavior of every human."

The Surveillance State is based on a psychology and a philosophy that has this view of life and human beings.

That's what we're dealing with. Nothing less.

Mass mind control. Operant conditioning. Coercion.

In Orwell's 1984, that’s what "Big Brother is watching you" was all about. The Surveillance State wasn't merely curious. It wasn't merely trying to stamp out terrorists. It was part and parcel of control.

*** Jon Rappoport: The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails atwww.nomorefakenews.com